COMMENTARY / Modernist music masters flail their batons at evil music critics

It's a safe bet that Barry Bonds doesn't have any music by the arch- modernist composer Charles Wuorinen lurking on his iPod. But the two men can agree about one thing, at least: When the going gets rough, it's always a good idea to blame the media.

Wuorinen and conductor James Levine -- who in spite of his smiley public demeanor seems to be equally embittered -- let loose with a bizarre joint display of pique in the pages of the New York Times on Sunday, as part of a round-table discussion on the subject of modern music and its discontents (composer John Harbison also took part, but largely declined to grouse).

Apparently, these guys aren't getting the respect that is their due, nor is Arnold Schoenberg, who according to Levine was perhaps the most important composer of the 20th century.

And whose fault is that? You guessed it: music critics.

"The problem with what happened after Schoenberg," Levine intoned, "was largely, or partly, coming from what turned out to be this desperate morass, futile attempt, to explain it."

Daniel J. Wakin, the Times' superb new classical music reporter, lost no time in picking up Levine's implication. "You seem to be laying all the blame on journalists, critics, writers on music," he said.

Darn right. "There was bad faith all around there for a while," said Levine, magnanimously spreading the responsibility around a little. "The problem is exacerbated by talk and print."

In a way, it's easy to understand why Wuorinen, once the San Francisco Symphony's composer-in-residence, should be so disgruntled. He has spent his career working assiduously to create music that conforms to the modernist ideals of historical progress and technical innovation. Impeccably crafted and intricately structured, it pursues the organizational ideas established by Schoenberg with impressive zeal. Along the way, he has garnered what rewards the world of contemporary music has to offer, including a MacArthur Foundation "genius" grant and a Pulitzer Prize. And Levine, who this year began as music director of the Boston Symphony with a veritable orgy of knotty modernist scores, is now a high-profile champion.

Audiences couldn't care less. Wuorinen's music and that of other similarly oriented composers has yet to make a dent in the culture at large, or in the consciousness of music lovers. Hence the bitterness, the self-pity, the snarling at the listeners for whose benefit all this scribbling is ostensibly being undertaken. (Elsewhere, Levine paints music as an arcane mystery whose secrets are available only through the efforts of a priestly caste of initiates, when he bewails the notion that "in music, everyone's entitled to an opinion.")

Not that public whining is exclusively a modernist pastime; Ned Rorem, as staunchly anti-modernist as they come, has made it a cottage industry. But it's especially poignant in their case, because things weren't supposed to play out this way.

The founding myth of modernism, dating back to the "Music of the Future" propounded by Liszt and his followers and later codified by Schoenberg, was that this was music too "advanced" for any but a handful of contemporary listeners. In later generations, though, all would become clear: The prophetic artist, scorned and misunderstood in his own day, would be hailed once his time had come.

It didn't work out that way -- or rather, it did for some, but not for everyone. Mahler's time came; so did Stravinsky's, Bartók's, Ives', even Berg's. Schoenberg and his acolytes are still waiting, and they're getting really testy.

Some folks, like the late English novelist Kingsley Amis, think they'll be waiting indefinitely. "Twentieth-century music is like pedophilia," Amis wrote. "No matter how persuasively and persistently its champions urge their cause, it will never be accepted by the public at large, who will continue to regard it with incomprehension, outrage and repugnance."

Obviously, that statement is mostly a compound of curmudgeonly conservatism and plain old philistinism, leavened by a desire to shock. But any music lover has to concede that it contains a grain of truth as well, from a sociological if not an artistic point of view.

The musical modernism of Schoenberg and his followers has never been embraced, even by those who long ago accepted equally challenging strains in the other arts. And as long as we're being honest, we might as well admit that we don't know why.

It may have to do with inherent qualities in the way the brain processes auditory information. It may have to do with trends in music education. It may simply be a function of cyclical patterns of history. It may be because the music stinks.

It seems to me that it would be worth trying to solve this enigma, especially for those who love and devote themselves to this tradition. Sniping at the messenger is a tired and fruitless ploy.